Alex­ion’s Soliris wows in rare dis­ease PhI­II tri­al, open­ing up a new fran­chise worth $500M-$700M

Three years af­ter it launched, Alex­ion $ALXN says that the Phase III study of its cash cow Soliris for rare cas­es of re­laps­ing neu­romyelitis op­ti­ca spec­trum dis­or­der scored a clear and con­vinc­ing win, set­ting up some near term ap­pli­ca­tions that one promi­nent an­a­lyst ex­pects could be worth up to $700 mil­lion a year in new mon­ey.

The dis­ease, NMOSD, is of­ten con­fused with mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis as the im­mune sys­tem at­tacks healthy tis­sue in the spine and eyes, re­spon­si­ble for blind­ing and some­times killing pa­tients. The drug in­hibits the com­ple­ment sys­tem, which in­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve plays a key role in the au­toim­mune dis­or­der.

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